I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, for 25 years and extensively written about it for the last five years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing scholarship have included The Huffington Post, Salon, and Film Threat. Follow me at @ScottMendelson.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Review: 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' Proves More Is Less

It’s going to be awhile before we see a Marvel movie that doesn’t necessarily have to “prove” something in the broad scheme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man 3 had to prove that The Avengers success could rub off on its biggest stand-alone property, while Thor: The Dark World answered if The Avengers could boost the less A-level properties (yes) and if a Marvel movie could succeed out of the summer (yup). Now we have Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which debuted yesterday in the UK and opens in America on April 4th.

Once again, pundits will be sussing out what its success (or, however unlikely, failure) means for the Marvel Universe as a whole. If Captain America 2 grosses anywhere near the $644 million worldwide that Thor 2 earned last November, it will go a long way towards making the case that Marvel is becoming a brand as potent as Pixar, where the studio is more important than content of each individual film and that a Marvel film can hit pretty much anywhere on the calendar.

The question is how much higher than $370 million Captain America 2 can soar absent the mainstream popularity of Iron Man or even the Tumblr-fueled fandom that surrounds the Thor stars. Also not helping is the somewhat limited role for Steve Rogers in The Avengers, as Thor got the plot connections, Tony Stark got the one-liners and character arc and Bruce Banner got the showy action beats. Steve comparably got short-changed. It will be interesting to see whether the explicitly American narrative inhibits overseas box office. On the plus side, the film features a few ”added value elements” this time around.

The first is the inclusion of Anthony Mackie as “The Falcon”. While it’s clearly a supporting role, basically a sidekick role this time around, it is the first African-American superhero to be featured in these films aside from “also Iron Man” War Machine. Even in that case, Don Cheadle was basically held hostage or controlled by the bad guys for nearly every moment in which he was in a super-suit. The Falcon arguably counts as Marvel Studios’ first black superhero. The other “added-value element” is the oodles of free publicity that the film received when Disney slotted Captain America 3 on May 6th, 2016, setting the state for a showdown between the third Steve Rogers film and Warner Bros.’ Batman/Superman film.

But the most interesting added value element is the surprise casting of Robert Redford as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s no secret that this film attempts to be a superhero variation on the 1970′s-style political paranoia thriller, and casting Redford is both a huge coup for Marvel’s credibility as well as possibly a draw for those theoretically too old for the core superhero demographic. Now obviously Redford didn’t turn All Is Lost or The Company You Keep into blockbusters, but seeing the iconic star in a major role in a big-budget superhero movie is, well, there’s a reason you cast Kevin Costner as Superman’s father. All of this is semantics. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is going to be a hit. It’s just a question of how big a hit it will be.

The Review:

There was a moment back in May 2012 when Marvel announced that they were upping the budget of Iron Man 3 from $140 million to $200m, with the intent of basically making every Marvel movie as “big” as The Avengers. Despite unofficial promises that that stand-alone films would be smaller and/or more character-driven affairs compared to the team-up films, Marvel decided to basically go big every time. I was not thrilled at the decision, remembering how extra money for gratuitous special effects had hurt rather than helped Daredevil. Marvel’s “more is more” strategy didn’t do any real harm to Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World, but it backfires with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. What starts as a terrific and grounded little thriller becomes less interesting as it gets less “little”.

For a film partially about trust, the perils of not knowing who to trust and the pain of not trusting anyone, Marvel and Walt Disney doesn’t seem to trust its audience as much as it should. This is a film that may think it’s being topical in terms of the old “security vs. liberty” debate, yet feels the need to both spoon feed its ideas (a villain literally boasts that “the world is finally ready to give up their freedom for security!”) and undermine its own impact by (vague first-half spoiler) blaming all of the world’s problems on insidious outside forces rather than flawed humans. This is a film which has a Captain America museum that exists purely to spoon-feed exposition to audiences who haven’t seen Captain America or The Avengers.

It lacks the faith in its audience to enjoy a Marvel film that doesn’t end with an insanely high-stakes and high-impact action finale that involves countless extras and flying warships, as well as one that doesn’t sugarcoat its harsh messaging with a comforting big bad. When the film sticks to the Alan J. Pakula meets Tom Clancy template that it obviously wants to ape, it’s a frankly terrific picture. It opens with some wonderful character beats for Steve Rogers and company, along with a dynamite action sequence set on a hijacked boat. The opening rescue, full of fluidly edited and vividly realized bone-crunching action, is probably the best fusion of superheorics and real-world action we’ve yet seen. The film uses Captain America’s inherent goodness (Chris Evans is terrific here) not as a source of fun but as a counterpart to how America should act in the best and worst of times.

Directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo are best known for their work on Community, and their crackerjack comic timing proves just the thing for constructing coherent and engaging action sequences. When the action sticks to the ground, it’s superb, with chases and shoot-outs in broad daylight that create real suspense by putting innocents in harms way. The chemistry between Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson (it’s amazing how easy it is to craft a compelling female character merely by not making them the love interest and/or a piece of ass) along with Evans and newbie Anthony Mackie, makes the scenes where characters just talk to each other every bit as riveting as the action. Johansson’s best moment comes during a brief glance as she realizes someone she trusted didn’t trust her. There frankly isn’t a bum performance in the bunch, and this is easily Samuel L. Jackson’s most engaged turn as Nick Fury.

But the “more is more” notion extends to its title character. The Winter Soldier pops up during an assassination attempt on Nick Fury, and for most of the film he’s just a silent killing machine who operates as an anti-deus ex machina, appearing when the heroes have an advantage. But the revelation about his origins is unearned. In short, it’s the equivalent of telling The Killing Joke during the Joker’s first appearance. And as the third act goes bigger and bigger, the ineffective emotional fall-out from its title character takes valuable time away from what works in an already lengthy film. The film’s post-9/11 conspiracy plot was enough without dragging Ed Brubaker’s famous arc into it. From a business point-of-view, I know why they brought him in this early, but it doesn’t work from an artistic perspective.

There is still much to admire about Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely craft a conspiracy plot that mostly makes sense while giving its characters strong point-of-views about a variety of subjects. Mackie is a terrific new addition to the Marvel Universe. There is clearly spin-off potential if Marvel chooses that route and his history as a traumatized veteran adds potency to his participation in the superheroics around him. Robert Redford is an interesting case; with the defining star of the kind of films they just don’t make any more lending his gravitas and credibility to a defining version of the “new” blockbuster. The story refreshingly screws with the status quo in ways that will reverberate in the Marvel Universe.

There is terrific stuff to be found, including a first act cameo by a major character from the first film that is quietly devastating. It at the very least merits a token recommendation merely as quality popcorn entertainment. It is interesting to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe slowly become what amounts to a defining critique of post-9/11 America with each stand-alone franchise dealing with different respective issues. But Captain America: The Winter Soldier undermines itself both in terms of over-the-top action that eventually bores, a screenplay that undermines its own relevancy, and the premature insertion of a secondary character that distracts from the core narrative and doesn’t work on an emotional level.

A Captain America 2 that stuck to its real-world conspiracy narrative and kept its action somewhat personal and smaller-scale, that didn’t offer comfortingly zany explanations for real-world horrors and held off the whole Winter Soldier business until another day… That would have been something of beauty. What we have is a deeply problematic film with much to recommend despite itself. In the broad scheme of things, this is a clear example of how Marvel’s choice to make every film “big” can hurt a given entry, as well as limit its ability to successfully tell smaller and/or more personal stories on the big screen.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a film about trust that falters most because it doesn’t trust its audience. Obviously this is a comic book universe and thus we should expect certain comic book embellishments. But Captain America 2 works best when it’s an action thriller that happens to be based on a superhero comic book, rather than a superhero film that happens to contain elements of an action thriller.

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I like these box office articles where you include reviews within them, you put in the effort unlike that Box Office Mojo douche. Another aspect that makes it noticeable to viewers is the subject matter; the American government isn’t exactly popular overseas, due to starting wars all over the place for decades in order to get oil or whatever. The fact that this is recognised in the film and they’re (presumably) antagonists is notable.

I’m really surprised that you didn’t like the film, I would’ve thought that you’d love it, especially considering how everyone is going cray cray over it.

I can’t speak to Ray’s character, but Box Office Mojo’s exhaustive database is an invaluable tool both for research and to confirm my own hypothesis in a given article or essay. It would be much harder to do what I do without their hard data at the push of a mouse.

As for the film, I went in expecting to love it. Disappointment is well, disappointing, but it has enough that works to merit a tepid recommendation.

I will disagree with you Mr. Mendleson about no more Marvel movies needing to “prove” something anymore. You forgot GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, which will be Marvel Studios’ first movie without any Avengers. Can MS produce hits with characters outside the Avengers umbrella?

Anyway after IM3 I figured that looking at the box-office charts for Thor and Captain America that one of Marvel’s goals for Phase 2 was for both sequels to not just improve upon the previous entry’s box-office, but each do half a billion global at the very least. (If indeed there is an actual bump from AVENGERS.)

Well THOR 2 did its bit. In fact the Norse God actually stood toe to toe with Superman (king of the superheroes) at the box-office last year.

Superman was the first superhero to really take off in the public eye so that’s why people still consider Superman “king of the superheroes”. Batman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man are the most popular superheroes of the moment, however.

Superman’s rich history/legacy and famous name, however, still has him keep that title.

Actually, what I said is “It’s going to be awhile before we see a Marvel movie that doesn’t necessarily have to “prove” something in the broad scheme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”. So yes, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY will have something to “prove” as well, specifically the things you cited among others.

Thanks for replying, that you take the time to do so speaks volumes regarding credibility and character, impressive and appreciated. As to the two parts, why not just two sepatate articles, so bumpkins like me still won’t draw a line connecting the two? The headline does say “Review”, not “A look at the effect of box office totals, then a Review”….

When I started writing at Forbes, the deal for being allowed to write artistic movie reviews along with my box office/marketing pieces was to include stuff about box office/financial information as well in the review. But rather than try to awkwardly insert financial stuff into the middle of a movie review, I just kept that to a few paragraphs at the top (I would prefer to have them at the bottom, but I was asked to put that part first). So the box office preview is what “pays” for the artistic review.

Scott.. I’m not sure what version of The Avengers you saw, but Cap was an integral part of the whole movie. He may not have had the battle scenes, but he was the glue that started to hold the Avengers together. I’m not sure what “plot connections” you thought Thor had, but he had a smaller role than Captain America.

Those scenes were so great, I was frankly surprised they weren’t included in the theatrical release. That moment when he’s going through files of everybody he knew and they’re all stamped “deceased,” and then his reaction to Peggy’s file and that moment where he stares at the phone but then does nothing, is wonderful.

Scott, I think you’re kinda missing the point about Marvel movies in general. You’re trying to fit these movies into something they aren’t – this movie isn’t MEANT to be a mish-mash of Clancy and anyone else: it’s a COMIC BOOK movie. Big explosive endings, actions sequences with some character development along the way – that’s what they do, and they do it incredibly well. You only need to look at the billions they’ve raked in along the way to see that. Being disappointed because of some issue with a failure of Marvel’s ‘trusting it’s audience’ (or lack thereof) sounds incredibly short-sighted. This isn’t an Oscar film, nor is it meant to be. Any sort of ‘meaning’ it’s trying to convey – including ‘trust’ issues – is limited and superficial when connected with the fictional ‘super-hero world’ it is set in – just as most comic books are. “Big” is Marvel, because Marvel has always been about the “Big”. So far, as a reader of Comics myself for over 30 years, I think Marvel’s hit the nail on the head doing it ‘Big’, and I hope they continued to do so.

I would love to ask if you are a comic book nerd? because to me it seems that critics that sees these movies give it the negative reviews, I mean that’s just how i see it personally. I have read other reviews and mainly from comic book enthusiasts that did not have any type of negative say about Winter Soldier and that as another solo marvel film, arguably one of the best marvel solo movies to date, so I guess what i’m really trying to ask is how much of a comic book nerd are you? because if you were a true fan of comics you would be giving it the high praise…not to say you are not giving it a good review but i feel like in a way you’re bashing the movie because of how they added some real world elments to it and that it was not neccessary. I believe it’s gonna give it a good little edge and i cannot personally wait to see it